Australia

Lexington Field: No Man’s War.

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LEXINGTON FIELD

Band: Lexington Field

Album: No Man’s War

Members:

Beau Gray – Vocals, Guitar
Cami Smith – Violin
Bryan Hane – Lead Guitar
Casey Jones – Bass
Vincent West – Drums

Hometown: San Diego CA

 

Mixing Punk, Americana and the melodic strains of Celtic music: these are the things you can pick up when you listen to all Lexington Field albums. The band nod to both traditional and alternative rock crowd with their unique style and energetic tunes. I am enjoying NO MAN’S WAR for its uplifting quality as a whole. Yes there are awesome tracks like American Crow, Crazy Eyes, Dear Old Friend, Here’s To You, Pioneer and Lady Arlington. I am sure you will have your own personal favorites when you get this album. The official release is on May 28 so watch out for it Celtic music fans.

The strength of No Man’s War relies on both its fast and slow tunes. The ballads are always heart-melting. Beau Gray knows how to wield his fine vocal instrument to move the fist and hearts seamlessly: the power of aggressive tunes and the sentimental ballads. Cami Smith is a master in tying heartstrings with the violin which takes its own stage in this recording. A very expressive instrument from those fine hands. Kudos to Bryan Hane for delivering the power chords and also for making the guitar such an instrument with many shades. I dig drummers and this is why the efforts of Vincent West is hard to ignore. He keeps this recording in one piece. And last but not the least, the grooves master Casey Jones shines in most of the danceholic tracks and yes the album demands multiple plays.

No Man’s War closes with the memorable Bluegrass infused Tumble. ” Two years have passed where are we now.” You know, this is why I love Americana. There is an ample amount of humanity in the style and delivery. The lyrics are always worth reading.

I love No Man’s War. I hope you do too. It seduces a listener to get hold of every  Lexington Field release.

Biography

Lexington Field is an American Fiddle Rock band from San Diego, CA. Formed in 2009, they have played hundreds of shows across the United States. In 2011, they released their debut album, “Old Dirt Road”. This was quickly followed by their highly regarded EP,”Poor Troubled Life”, in 2012. Both albums are distributed through New Folk Records based out of Minnesota. Lexington Field is about to release their sophomore full length album, “No Man’s War”, in Spring of 2013. These San Diego Fiddle Rockers have shared the stage with awesome bands such as the Young Dubliners, Old Man Markley, The Mahones, The Tossers, Hoist The Colors, The Ramshackle Army, The Fisticuffs, The Langer’s Ball, Hounds of Finn, Brick Top Blaggers, and many more acts across the country! Lexington Field embraces the best of North American musical elements such as rock, punk, country, bluegrass, Americana and folk and mixes in a fiddle to capture a unique and memorable sound. Along with their high energy live show, they give their fans an amazing musical experience!

Lexington Field

http://www.lexingtonfield.com
http://www.mayortomsspeech.com
http://www.myspace.com/lexingtonfield
http://www.youtube.com/lexingtonfield
http://www.twitter.com/lexingtonfield

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Huzzah!

It’s a wonderful weekend and I hope you are all taking time to refresh your minds with amazing music, beautiful scenes and good friends. Just as a reminder:

The awesome album from Kevin O’Donnell is now out for those who haven’t bought their copies yet.  This is a fantastic album. My aunt was telling me how she can relate to the stories in this recording because her husband was a Croatian immigrant to Australia. Kevin O’Donnell’s sentiments are universal and they speak for all.

More hot stuff:

Artist: Maxim Cormier

Album: Same

The debut album by Max Cormier forms a cuspate between traditional and original tunes. He does this with seamless transition and freshness.

Band:Iona

Album: Silver

Silver has eleven tracks of rich musicality that will continue to echo in your soul long after the CD has been removed from the player. The pieces are woven in such a way that the album sounds seamless

Artist: Aisling Jarvis

Album: Romeo and Juliet

These are all solid tracks with their own merits and styles. Her musical style is her own with a few nods from adult contemporary pop/rock, traditional Irish and folk.

Súnas: Definitive Celtic from Australia

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Sunas

Sunas

Australian Celtic quartet Súnas offers something mystical, relaxing and rich to all listeners.

The strongest asset of Australian quartet Sunas is their use of tight vocal harmonies. This is followed by enchanting and captivating melodies. In the world of fast and loud music, Sunas is a great find. This is suited for people who like their Celtic tunes more relaxing and mystical. For someone who discovered Celtic music through the likes of Clannad, Loreena McKennitt and Connie Dover, the emphasis on female voices is really a plus point. I love them!

They took all the influences from the Celtic nations and mix those with the unique sounds of Australia.  The vocals float between the world of folk and classical pop, making the songs accessible to all listeners. Even to those who don’t listen to Celtic music. Sunas has four members: Sarah Calderwood, Paul Brandon, Mannie McAllister and Michael Patrick. Each plays different instruments and also sings in solo or in harmony. They credit Kate Rusby,  Karan Casey, Pauline Scanlon, Flook. Liam O’ Manolai, Dougie MacLean,   Altan, Solas, Peter Gabriel and The Bothy Band as musical influences. No wonder they are so good. It’s because of the eclectic mix of sounds from different and amazing artists.

It is hard for me to chose any song as a personal favorite because there’s never one I don’t like. I am serious! There are tunes that you probably hear interpreted by other artists like for example Black is the Color and The Demon Lover. Reels, jigs and also a wider European sound are all over the recordings of Sunas. Instruments like whistles, fiddles and even didgeridoo embellish the recordings. But they are done tastefully. There are songs that use minimal instruments because perhaps, the band feels that the song demands it. There are fast and slow tunes: a good amount of balance.

My big thanks to percussionist Jeremy Sibson for bringing this terrific band to my attention.

Bio:

Súnas is a fiery four-piece Celtic band featuring multi-instrumentalists and exquisite four-part vocal harmonies.
Biography

Súnas is a fiery four-piece Celtic band featuring multi-instrumentalists and exquisite four-part vocal harmonies. They play a unique and unforgettable blend of original, contemporary and traditional tunes and songs.

The band has been in existence for more than a decade and has established a strong presence on the Australian folk festival circuit. In addition to performing at many popular venues around Queensland regularly and touring, Súnas has headlined the Cygnet, Tamar Valley and Fleadh Ceol Folk Festivals interstate and were chosen to perform their own music at the ’09 Woodford Festival opening ceremony. They have also appeared at the National, Snowy Mountains of Music, Wintermoon and Port Fairy Folk Festivals, Fête de la Musique (which was broadcast to France), the Queensland Multicultural Festival, Music by the Sea and Brisbane City Council events, and receive regular radio airplay in Australia, the BBC in the UK and worldwide. In late 2009 they toured folk clubs all over the UK, finishing with Dougie MacLean’s Caledonia Concert which was broadcast by the BBC as part of the Homecoming Scotland celebrations. 2010 has already seen them play in several states and even Russia for St Patrick’s Day.

In 2008 Súnas released their debut album ‘A Breath Away from Shadow’, awarded four out of five stars by the Courier-Mail, and five stars by iTunes. They have just finished recording a new album, ‘Celtic Road’ and accompanying live DVD with the ABC/Universal Music that will be released in Feb 2011 and is already receiving airplay nationally.

http://www.sunasband.com/

http://twitter.com/sunas

https://www.facebook.com/sunasmusic

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Huzzah!

I am revising my blogging style again. Instead putting too many artists in my feature I decide to just take one and then just talk about anything in my Huzzah! section. That way I can concentrate on a particular band or artist and not drown my readers with too much information. After all I am going to post as often as possible now so no need to wait too much.

Qristina and Quinn Bachand

Qristina and Quinn Bachand

For Qristina and Quinn Bachand, music is a Family affair in 67 Music

Yes folks my new album review for 67 Music is up so please read. And also don’t forget to subscribe to 67 Music because they always come up with interesting reviews as well as Celtic music oriented events. Take note: I made an error of writing debut album when what I meant was second album. Anyway, here’s the excerpt from the review:

The shared creativity of siblings Quinn and Qristina Bachand in Family is a testament to the fact that Celtic music is and has always been a family affair.   And it is no accident that the title is their second album is exactly that: Family.  This album was released around late 2011 which catapulted the two into international live shows and countless youtube footage uploaded by fans.  All the tracks are brilliant, well produced and display tight musicianship.  But let us not ignore the other merits that Family has in store for those who are trying to pick up their Celtic albums. Red more….

Kevin O'Donnell

Kevin O’Donnell

Here’s the third teaser for the Kevin O’ Donnell album:

The Irish-American Experience

While there are many strong connections and instances where American folk songs and tunes can be traced back to Ireland, and many fine songs written about the Irish experience abroad by Irish expatriates – especially in America – the experiences of their subsequent generations has gone virtually ignored. There has never been a collection of songs written exclusively from such a perspective.

This is the impetus behind the DEEP IS THE WELL project – uniquely American story-songs that are the specters of a common Irish past.

http://www.deepisthewell.com./

Wild Irish Poet: Alan Cooke

Wild Irish Poet: Alan Cooke

I feel I need to plug this because I am one of the callers. The show is based in New York and Wild Irish Poet a.k.a Alan Cooke who is the show’s guest is in Ireland. I called in from the Philippines. Crazy isn’t it? But the internet makes the world small. Anyway this is a radio interview about his book Naked in New York and I was talking to him earlier that day and told him I’d be calling. The show is Called Away with Words hosted by Victoria Valentine. It’s an interesting show so I encourage you to listen until the end. I called in around 14:28 and please don’t tease me about my nervous voice lol! http://www.blogtalkradio.com/aww1/2013/03/27/alan-cooke-irish-emmy-winning-writer-actor-filmmaker

And now for events….

Click to enlarge

 

Click to enlarge

 

Australia’s Trouble in the Kitchen

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It is a great Sunday morning to start the weekend with Australia’s own Trouble in the Kitchen. Their recordings simply bring the beauty of the Emerald Isle right to the Down Under. Fast or slow, the band exudes great atmosphere and beauty. There is  this warmth vibe  within each track, as exemplified by The Pleasure Palace and Road to Port Fairy. There are good vocals in songs like Four Pence a Day and Mill Towns. Great sound engineering washed all tracks. Gossamer sheen  and lush production technique predominate the amazing mastering. These are sound characteristic of bands like Grada and Cara.

If you are a fan of Nicklecreek, The Punch Brothers and Liadan then you will definitely warm up to Trouble in the Kitchen.

Fiddle – Adrian (Ado) Barker
Flute – Ben Stephenson
Guitar – Kate Burke
Bouzouki – Joe Ferguson

http://www.myspace.com/troubleinthekitchen

http://www.troubleinthekitchen.com/

Trish Long of Sahara Talks About The Soul Of The New Album

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The Lucky 9: Trish answers 9 facts about the new album “There is this place I go “..


Sahara are a duo with a beautiful story. The name itself conjures colorful images of distant lands and exotic animals, and it also sounds relaxing. The album cover:Road paved with gold, sounds like the  lives these two people are leading. In this story, Trish Long explains how music, made it possible for them to see and meet people from other places. She also expands the topic on the recording of the album, and the story behind each song.

1. Please tell us about the latest album “There is this place I go”.

We released our latest album ‘There is this place I go’ in 2010 on iTunes and various internet music sites. The songs on this album were written between 2007 and 2009. We suffered a lot of personal setbacks during this period due to serious illness and hospitalization with Dave and we were totally surprised that we got to finish the recording at all! So far the album has received very positive feedback and reviews as well as airplay on radio stations both here in Australia and overseas.
2. Both you and Dave are doing vocals and instruments. What’s the process of recording each song?

We always record a demo version of an album first, that way we can listen back carefully to the songs, tempos, arrangements and our performances. We always end up making various changes. Then we move on to the serious recording of the album  – we start with a basic drum track and Dave on the guitar. This is followed by the main vocals and then bass line, keyboards, vocal harmonies, brass lines and other sequencing eg strings. We then record the solo and finish with the drums and percussion. When it’s all down we listen over and over again to the performances and if we’re happy with them we distance ourselves from it for a matter of weeks before we listen again with fresh ears for the effects and final mix.

3. What’s the inspiration behind the new album? 

A lot of the songs were inspired by Dave’s health struggle and survival – it was a very close call on a number of occasions. This is most evident in the song ‘Where Angels Rest’ which was drawn from Dave’s near death experience. ‘There is this place I go’ represents how you can escape in your own mind when you need to, ‘A love so powerful’ is a very positive upbeat song and represents the part that love plays in a recovery.  Other songs are also a reflection of what we were witnessing on a global basis eg. ‘Has it ever been any different before’ and ‘No Money for the ride home’. ‘This is the story’ is about the challenges that people face in their lives – be it on a physical, mental or emotional level – and how they choose to deal with it ‘The road less travelled’ has an almost similar theme to it. I was most amazed that when Dave was at his lowest point physically that he still had such inspiration for writing music and lyrics and a driving force to continue with his music. He didn’t have an instrument at hand but memorized the music till he was well enough to return home and take up his guitar again. At this stage he was my inspiration as I witnessed what he went through. Going through a trauma and living far away from our homeland became the inspiration for our instrumental ‘Eblana’ which is the ancient name for our city of birth ‘Dublin’ and was a very emotional piece for us both when writing and recording. Other songs like ‘Living in the here and now’ and ‘I’d like to dance all night’ are much more upbeat showing the fun side of life and to enjoy the now!

4. Do you record an album based on a concept, or something just unravels as you go along?

We’ve never been into concept albums….it’s just not our thing!! We’ve always written solely from inspiration and don’t believe that songwriting is a ‘task’ that we set ourselves. Music is an art form for us and we are truly grateful for the inspiration we receive – it is not at our command and therefore we also have to accept dry periods. We are honest about our music and put it out there to the best of our abilities in the hope that others may enjoy it also. At the end of the day we always have more songs written than are needed for an album so when we select the songs we try to get a flow from start to finish.

5. Tell us about your studio routine.

Our lives tend to be chaotic and though we love the idea of a routine it just doesn’t exist for us. Our main priority is rehearsing that way we keep up our performance levels – singing and playing instruments. To be honest we absolutely love playing music and performing! In the studio we have a number of projects on the go – both short term and long term. We are in the middle of recording a new album and have recently recorded a couple of home videos to promote a couple of tracks ‘This is the story’ and ‘Has it ever been any different before’ off ‘There is this place I go’. It was a bit of fun for us because in the past our videos were of our live performances on TV or a video produced by a TV network. These home videos were a learning curve and very enjoyable!

6. You’re both Irish who moved over to Australia. Has this made changes to both your musical styles and direction?

We have spent many years on concert tour around Australia getting to perform in places ranging from outback towns to major cities and everywhere in-between. We travelled to all these performances in our old car no matter what the distance and really got the feel of Australia. it’s landscape and it’s people. We got to meet thousands of Aussies – see the different lifestyles, hear their stories and discuss past and current issues. Our music became imbued with our surroundings. We have sometimes described our music as ‘the mist meeting the haze’.
7. There is this haunting feel in the way you play the saxophone . Have you gotten the same reactions from others?

You are the first to describe my sax playing as ‘haunting’ and I definitely like the sound of that….so thank you!! All I can say is that the saxophone is my real voice and I have always used it to express myself. In our music I try to interpret the emotion of the song and translate it into the solo.
8. How do you and Dave manage music and family life together? I read your bio and it’s stated that you did appear in the mini-series” inside “as musician couples. Tell us about this stint. 

The separation of our music life together and our family life is invisible. We seem to morph from one into the other like two songs. We’re not even aware but we have a different relationship when we are working on the music – we are the musician friends of when we first met and when we are out and about we are just another married couple.

Re our short acting career (ha ha) it all started when we were scheduled to perform an original song on a night time TV entertainment show called ‘Davis at Large’ on RTE – Ireland’s national broadcaster. Our appearance was brought forward due to heavy snowfall and the special guest of the night – the inimitable ‘Spike Milligan’ was snowed in in the UK and couldn’t get to Dublin so we said yes we’ll get there. We drove for hours through the snow and spent all day at the studio in a dressing room displaying a large ‘gold star’ with the name Spike Milligan!! It was live to air and a producer of the new Irish series ‘Inside’ happened to be watching. He got in touch and asked if we could appear in the series acting the very difficult role of a couple of musicians. However we were to be from the charity organization ‘Legion of Mary’ and the set was an all male prison so looking as pious as possible we made our way through the cat calling throng of actor prisoners to try to win them over with a Christian song and when that failed we got them all to join in our rendition of ‘If you see your brother standing by the road’. Dave got to speak…improvising….’Great to be here’….rapturous applause exit stage left. Then we had to leave the country….as yes it all makes sense now. What happened next ….tune in next week.
9. How did you guys celebrate Saint Patrick’s day?

This year was a quiet one as Dave is still in recovery with a couple more operations to go. We sent and received greetings from family and friends, played some music, went for a short walk and had a celebratory Guinness  purely for medicinal purposes (ahem) and as they say in Ireland ‘to drown the shamrock’.

P.S My special thanks to Trish for helping me out with the facts. Editing is a challenge 🙂

Band sites:

http://saharamusic.livejournal.com/